hope spot
by teawithmilk
Summary: [2012-verse, post Mutagen Man Unleashed] April never wanted to see the Turtles again. Unfortunately, it's not that simple. She still needs them to do something for her, first.


A hypothetical situation set after _Mutagen Man Attacks! _- April can't cut the Turtles out of her life forever.

turtles = nickelodeon.

* * *

**—hope spot—**

"I was starting to think you'd never come back."

April turned from where she was looking at the tattered posters on the lab wall. From the doorway, Donatello was watching her with gentle eyes, a soft, trace smile on his face. She shifted, uncomfortable under his gaze, and instantly his smile faded away. "Yeah," she huffed, deadpan and bitter. "Well. Here I am, just can't keep away, can I? April O'Neil, sewer spelunker extraordinaire."

He looked away, his hands crossing in front of him and the fingers of his right hand picking at the skin around his left thumb. Insecurity seemed to cloak him, and April didn't care. "I didn't mean it like that."

"I know how you meant it. Look, Don," she snapped, and he flinched, and she wasn't sure if it was because of what she called him or the tone of her voice. "You're the only person in the city - the world, even - who can cure my dad. So that's why I'm here. To help."

"…is that the only reason?"

"Yes," she said honestly. _Stop it_, she thought, at the twinge in her chest from watching the way his body-language crumbled into something small and defeated. Donatello didn't deserve her sympathy. "My _dad_ is flying around the city like some kind of _monster_," he flinched again. "and you can fix him."

"I will," he said earnestly, taking a step towards her. "I promise, April, I'll do whatever it takes," and April took a step back, waving a hand at his desk chair before folding her arms tightly across her chest.

"Well then. Let's get started."

"Oh," he said, eagerly heading over to his desk and palming a notebook. "I already started, here, it's mostly trial-and-error, but—"

"Then keep going."

He blinked, as though trying to process the previous two minutes of conversation, then nodded, a shadow crossing his face before it defaulted into something hard, and stubborn. His math face, when he was faced with a problem with a difficult, hidden solution, locked away in other equations and myriad problems.

The lab was quiet, then, the sound of his computer fan a slow, steady hush beneath the clinking sound as he dripped mutagen into a test tube, and April watched, feeling though he _needed_ to be watched, to make sure he did what he had promised he would do, like out of the test tubes, her dad would magically reappear, human and whole. She could barely remember how that felt, hearing his key in the lock when he came home from work, sleeping the whole night through without hearing him screaming, not cringing whenever she heard the sound of wings.

The sooner Donatello finished his work and found a cure, the sooner she could have her life back.

The life that he and his brothers had done their best to wreck.

_God_, she wanted to hate him, she thought, roughly flipping through his careful notes on mutagen, mutagen theories. Hate _them_. Hate the fact that they were the only ones who could cure her dad.

Timidly, Donatello cleared his throat. "Um, could you fetch a petri dish?" he asked, his hands full with the tubes and the dropper. "It's the shelf to the right of Metalhead. Thanks," he added, when she plopped the little glass saucer into his open palm.

April didn't reply. Instead, she pulled over her old seat and perched next to him, watching his movements closely. Donatello did _something_ to the petri dish, then set it aside. "So," he said lightly a minute later, still staring at his little array of green-glowing tubes. "How- how is school?"

The way he asked the question, April didn't like. It felt like he was appealing to something - the past, when they'd done research together, or when they'd sat in her aunt's apartment watching nature documentaries, or the time he'd 'found' her report card and sat with her studying until she'd dragged her trigonometry grade up by the scruff of its neck.

A little bubble of warmth starts in her chest.

_Okay. Show me how you solve for x._

_You just… dig, right? 'Cause X marks the spot._

She crushes it down.

"None of your business," she said, tersely, turning back to his notes. Get through this, and then move on.

Swallowing, Donatello just nodded. He got back to work.

* * *

—end—


End file.
